Resumen de Faith of knowledge in Tanabe Hajime's Philosophy of Religion
Nishida Kitarō famously remarked that “from a standpoint like Tanabe’s, there is no salvation by faith.” This criticism has greatly influenced interpretations of Tanabe’s philosophy of religion. The criticism may apply to Tanabe’s thinking up until 1944, but it seems wide of the mark after he set out to rebuild his philosophical standpoint in the autumn of that year with his theory of zangedō 懺悔道 or “metanoetics.” The theory has been widely studied but an attempt has yet to be made to study the complex relationship it establishes between faith and knowledge. I will argue here that Nishida’s criticism relates to Tanabe’s earlier writings, where faith was absorbed without remainder into the rational pursuit of the absolute knowledge of reality. With metanoetics, there is a crucial change: faith is now seen to arise precisely where the “belief ” in reason collapses. The renunciation of self-power in full self-awareness opens one to salvation by the absolute. With faith, Tanabe argues, faith and knowledge are not one and the same but distinct and mutually enhancing forces that cooperate to transform knowing into a “knowledge of bearing witness.
